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Untamed Space

In Untamed Space, Renegade Performance Group artistic director and choreographer André M. Zachery calls upon his familial lineage in the Southern United States and Haiti and his upbringing on the south side of Chicago to construct an interdisciplinary performance about “marooning” in the 21st Century.

Historically, maroon colonies were liberated communities of Africans who escaped to hills, mountains, and forests upon their arrival to the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. Untamed Space considers the spiritual dimensions of maro on colonies and, in Zachery’s own words, “how the creation of those impassible spaces has influenced contemporary identities of African-blooded people in the Americas. ”

This is Zachery’s latest foray under his AFROFUTURISM series, an ongoing artistic investigation exploring and reinterpreting Black signifiers and culture through technology with a contemporary perspective. Untamed Space covers the trajectory of marooning across time and space: starting in Haiti, moving to Mississippi, and, as Zachery explains, “arriving at my point of departure in Chicago, and into the Afrofuture.”